Today we travelled to West London’s Citadel Festival in Gunnersbury Park. It’s hot and there are thousands of people with glitter on their faces and shiny jewels in their hair, ready to enjoy the three large stages between some amusement park rides, merry-go-rounds, street food stalls and bars.
We head over to the main stage in order to see the Dream Wife set.
Alice Go (guitar), Bella Podpadec (bass) and Rakel Mjöll (vocals), hailing from Iceland. They formed the band as an art project in 2014 whilst studying at Brighton University. The fake girl band name was taken from the 1953 film with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, they then filmed a mockumentary in the style of “Spinal Tap”.
The trio was brought up on listening to Bikini Kill, David Bowie, Le Tigre and The Slits. Their lyrics tackle gender roles, feminism and sexual objectification. In 2018 Dream Wife was included on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 13 Best Things We Saw” at Lollapalooza festival. And a year on, we have to agree – they make us think of the Runaways, Blondie and Karen O from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. All three women (and touring drummer Alex Paveley) have a great contemporary rock look and an unforgettable stage presence. Everything just works and the show is great. They are one of the few bands that sound the best live.
They play songs such as “Fire”, “Hey Heartbreaker”, “Kids”, “Somebody” and “F.U.U” and we absolutely love it. The mixture of garage rock, punk and pop is a winner. Rakel’s stage persona is a killer. Big thumbs up and we cannot wait to see them again.
